As much as I despise the ending, ME3 has some tremendous moments before that. The ending of the Tuchanka campaign is especially memorable.

Indeed. That's why when it comes to emotional impact, ME3 is my favorite of the trilogy. I don't despise the ending (or, at least, the EC - the vanilla ending is pretty bad), but it was definitely very unsatisfying. I can think of other games that had vomit-inducing endings, but we must not speak of them for they don't exist.

I have never understood this. It's the same ending. The only difference is a 2 minute addendum that basically says "oh, they just magically fixed those relays" and "the Normandy didn't crash, they just stopped briefly on an alien planet to have an impromptu funeral service before leaving again". Still the same space ghost, still the same "synthetics kill you so you won't be killed by synthetics" reasoning, still the same RGB choices.

perfect choice of words, since that is about the only way to get someone to play it. If you want RPG-writer to see brilliant writing in a Obsidian Entertainment game... I would force them to play Fallout 3 (to see what not to do) and then play Fallout: New Vegas to see how it should be done. Sabre made me finish AP, I will admit decent story to great story, but the utter frustration you had to put up with to see the story, well that would only be worth the time and effort in a Star Wars game, see TSL.

*facepalm* for this post.

F:NV is definitely not the way you want a STORY driven RPG to work. Really. You think someone should make stories work like that?
Nope, just no.
And that story or C&C thriumps AP? Nope.

I have never understood this. It's the same ending. The only difference is a 2 minute addendum that basically says "oh, they just magically fixed those relays" and "the Normandy didn't crash, they just stopped briefly on an alien planet to have an impromptu funeral service before leaving again". Still the same space ghost, still the same "synthetics kill you so you won't be killed by synthetics" reasoning, still the same RGB choices.

Yeah, as I said earlier in the thread, none of my real issues with the ending were fixed by the Extended Cut. Though I suppose I appreciate the fact that BioWare made the EC in the first place.

I don't appreciate it whatsoever. It took the begging of fans to get them to admit that they had huge plot holes to fix and things to explain. When it finally came out, as you said, not much was fixed.

I've been disgusted with Bioware ever since.

I think I invested more emotionally in the Mass Effect series than any other game (even more than my all-time favorite, Grim Fandango). Mass Effect 1 and 2 were absolutely spectacular games and Mass Effect 3 was a great game in its own right - just utterly disappointing to look back on how many hours I put in and how hard some decisions were to make...only to find out that at the end of the day, there are only 3 completely similar outcomes to it all.

I think the best ending was dreamed up by the fans. That Sheppard was in the process of being indoctrinated, and when he chose to fight the reapers, it cuts out to Anderson pulling Sheppard out of the wreckage.

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." Thomas Jefferson

Urluckyday, I feel your pain. You descibe my utter dumbfounded shock and resulting mini-depression exactly. I play the MP because that way I can pretend the ending still hasn't happened, that as James Tiberius Kirk said, "I like to think that there are, always, possibilities. "

Urluckyday, I feel your pain. You descibe my utter dumbfounded shock and resulting mini-depression exactly. I play the MP because that way I can pretend the ending still hasn't happened, that as James Tiberius Kirk said, "I like to think that there are, always, possibilities. "

It's just frustrating to me that anybody could **** up a series that bad in just the last 5-10 minutes! Once I met the "god child," I knew the ride was over. Mass Effect could've been one of the greatest stories ever told (in any medium) had they just taken a little more time to think things through and realize that there were other ways to end it. I don't know whether or not it came as a result of pressure from EA to get the game done, but I doubt it.

I know it's been over a year now, but it still bothers me that I never got to finish my story - I got to finish their story with 3 stupidly similar outcomes.

Well the DA thread was a pretty much random necro of a thread with a previous post almost 2 years prior for a game that is soon to be purged from existence (if Bioware/EA has its way). This thread is at least a fairly recent ongoing discussion. Whether there is any merit in said discussion given the polarisation of the issue, as you seem to be alluding to, is another matter.

As long as no-one starts attacking those who think the ending is good/bad I don't see an issue, the debate can be on going, not sure it is going anywhere in particular.

Personally I hated both endings (normal and EC). They were just lazy, I hate space child as well - why was space child at the start and end of the game, why was Sheppard dreaming of space child? The indoctrination theory is the only one I would have to explain that personally. I hate that really I think the Leviathan DLC is required to explain the essential question

Personally I think leaving the Reapers motives more unknown would of been better, I do realize of course Achilles for example disagree's with me. I suppose my frustration is best expressed in funny pictures...

The Indoctrination theory made a heck of a lot more sense than any of the other endings. Heck I thought that's what was going on during the whole game anyway with the kid appearing through the whole thing. It seemed like the way brainwashing had been done before. Take something familiar, and twist it until you no longer understand why it would be twisted to see it that way.

The rest of the game however was wonderful. I think that's why the end felt so bad. If that had been the ending to something like Doom, whatever, Not that personally invested in the characters. Not that invested in all the other people. If the story from Mass Effect 1 through Mass Effect 3 had not been so well thought out and engaging, the ending of ME3 would probably have never been an issue.

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." Thomas Jefferson

why was space child at the start and end of the game, why was Sheppard dreaming of space child?

The "space child" was not at the beginning of the game.

As for why the "space child" was at the end of the game, see the Rannoch mission with Legion in ME3 (or 1997's Contact, starring Jodie Foster).

Could that have been done better? Probably. Was it completely unexplained and/or out of left field? No.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathan7

The indoctrination theory is the only one I would have to explain that personally.

I'm only cursorily familiar with this. Based on my understanding of it the indoctrination theory would make both existing ending even more meaningless. Am I wrong?

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathan7

I hate that really I think the Leviathan DLC is required to explain the essential question

Did you mean From Ashes?

Leviathan explains

spoiler:

why the Reapers look like giant cuttlefish, where indoctrination comes from, and how the cycle started

From Ashes, on the other hand

spoiler:

provided the foil for Shepard, and by extension, this cycle. All the other cycles took the Javik route (i.e. one dominate species over all others), whereas Shepard was able to unite species, help them to work past their insurmountable differences, build trust where no one else could. In other words, he did what no other organic was able to do in the history of the universe: bring the galaxy together. This is how he showed the Reapers that they were wrong and forced the recalculation of their directive.

You can still figure this out without the DLC, however it certainly helps to show, rather than tell.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathan7

Personally I think leaving the Reapers motives more unknown would of been better, I do realize of course Achilles for example disagree's with me.

Meh. I suppose it would have been possible to write a story that was interesting, engaging, satisfying, etc without revealing the motivations of the Reapers, however antagonists which are "evil for evil's sake" tend to be boring. While the whole

spoiler:

AI takes instructions a little too literally, resulting in mayhem for the organics it was intended to protect

schtick may be a little thread-bare, it does afford a little umph for the modern tragedy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathan7

Whenever I see this one, I wonder if the person who made/the person posting it either doesn't get that it's wrong or conveniently pretends not to get that it's wrong for the sake of the lolz.

Could that have been done better? Probably. Was it completely unexplained and/or out of left field? No.

I think it definitely could of been done better

Quote:

Originally Posted by Achilles

I'm only cursorily familiar with this. Based on my understanding of it the indoctrination theory would make both existing ending even more meaningless. Am I wrong?

I think it would of made for an absolutely awesome plot twist. Usually with "amazing" plot twists, say Revan I already saw it coming from way off, I certainly wouldn't of guessed Shepard was indoctrinated. From a story perspective it would be great I think, for an RPG (which ME is and isn't) it would be awful; having the PC in an RPG as an unreliable narrator seems highly problematic
It would of course make all gameplay after the point Shepard was indoctrinated 'pointless' - but isn't the point of indoctrination the insidious you think you are doing what is right part of it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Achilles

Did you mean From Ashes?

Leviathan explains

spoiler:

why the Reapers look like giant cuttlefish, where indoctrination comes from, and how the cycle started

I'm not sure what the name of the DLC is as I played it on a friends computer but whichever one has the Leviathan hiding out below the waves on a far off planet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Achilles

From Ashes, on the other hand

spoiler:

provided the foil for Shepard, and by extension, this cycle. All the other cycles took the Javik route (i.e. one dominate species over all others), whereas Shepard was able to unite species, help them to work past their insurmountable differences, build trust where no one else could. In other words, he did what no other organic was able to do in the history of the universe: bring the galaxy together. This is how he showed the Reapers that they were wrong and forced the recalculation of their directive.

You can still figure this out without the DLC, however it certainly helps to show, rather than tell.

I was more meaning in terms of the origins of the Reapers and what happened, space child says a bit but personally I thought the Leviathan explain it much better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Achilles

Meh. I suppose it would have been possible to write a story that was interesting, engaging, satisfying, etc without revealing the motivations of the Reapers, however antagonists which are "evil for evil's sake" tend to be boring. While the whole

spoiler:

AI takes instructions a little too literally, resulting in mayhem for the organics it was intended to protect

schtick may be a little thread-bare, it does afford a little umph for the modern tragedy.

Whenever I see this one, I wonder if the person who made/the person posting it either doesn't get that it's wrong or conveniently pretends not to get that it's wrong for the sake of the lolz.

For me, you go back to ME1, and Soverign (sp) talks about the Reapers being far above human understanding and how humans cannot understand their motives, when you can actually explain it in a sentence, that I found highly frustrating. It's not so much evil for evils sake as the motives behind it at least being more complex than what was explain in ME; I think thats my gripe was ultimately the explanation was simple. As for the picture I was originally intending to say the above, but I found that picture too tempting to post instead succumbed to the lolz

Based on my understanding of it the indoctrination theory would make both existing ending even more meaningless. Am I wrong?

No. We rarely agree on anything, but we do agree on this. There's bad fan faction and then there's the IT.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathan7

For me, you go back to ME1, and Soverign (sp) talks about the Reapers being far above human understanding and how humans cannot understand their motives, when you can actually explain it in a sentence, that I found highly frustrating. It's not so much evil for evils sake as the motives behind it at least being more complex than what was explain in ME; I think thats my gripe was ultimately the explanation was simple.

As I have said since ME2 came out with its go nowhere side-quest and sudden injection of all new (and contradictory) lore, this is what happens when you make up the overarching plot for a trilogy as you go along. It's never going to end well.

As I have said since ME2 came out with its go nowhere side-quest and sudden injection of all new (and contradictory) lore, this is what happens when you make up the overarching plot for a trilogy as you go along. It's never going to end well.

Aye, I certainly agree, and the way the three games play out it seems to me that Bioware suddenly thought we can make a lot of money off Mass Effect so we should do a sequel, the games don't play out as an over arching plot IMO. I agree ME2 is an entirely pointless - you spend the whole game trying to stop the reapers coming back and then ends with the reapers coming back... My biggest bug bear across the series; Cerburus being terrorists/"good" guys/Indoctrinated I found extremely painful/fanciful.

Funnily enough of course I think Star Wars and the Prequels also show this problems, the cracks started appearing in RotJ and then the prequels...

At least Lucas had most of the background material for the OT (less so the prequels) roughed out before production on the first movie even started in 1977. Bioware set out to make a trilogy of games with no clear idea of where the plot would progress after the first game. You could argue they were maybe playing it safe in case ME1 was a flop. But then they made the second game and still had no idea about the plot for the 3rd one, or how either tied back in with the narrative arc of the series. That way madness lies....

Indeed he does, but that's not because they are the same entity. At several points during Legion's mission, it's pointed out that things are being represented in ways that are familiar to Shepard's consciousness simply to make them more "comforting". Since this child is heavy on his mind, the AI chooses that form to "interface" with him.

From a narrative perspective, it may be there in an attempt to draw closure to that sub-plot or it could be that the boy has come to represent the war (in it's entirety) to Shepard. We can debate whether or not it's clumsy (I'm inclined to agree that it is), but it's also not the big "WTF?!" that a lot of people make it out to be.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathan7

I think it definitely could of been done better

As do I, however if I'm going to proceed with any degree of honesty, I have to retire to your Willy Wonka meme. Will you be there too?

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathan7

For me, you go back to ME1, and Soverign (sp) talks about the Reapers being far above human understanding and how humans cannot understand their motives, when you can actually explain it in a sentence, that I found highly frustrating.

Well, considering that Bioware had to release DLC + an Extended Cut to explain it and some people still don't get it, I think you might be over simplifying.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonathan7

It's not so much evil for evils sake as the motives behind it at least being more complex than what was explain in ME; I think thats my gripe was ultimately the explanation was simple.

I guess on that point we'll have to part ways, agreeing to respectfully disagree. I think there was more nuance than the game gets credit for.

Regarding the Willy Wonka meme of "can you come up with somethin better?" ...people don't have to. Doesn't matter what they're criticizing, no one has to come up with something better when the criticize a piece of work if they don't want to.

If someone views/plays/whatevers a piece of work and says "this doesn't make any sense and I don't like it"... that's good enough. Why? Because if we go through the critiques of everyone on the planet, both professional and amateur, the great majority of those people critique works without giving an alternate take on them.

A lot of the time, if something makes 0 sense and there's no justifiable reason why it makes 0 sense but still fits into the rest of the work, the person has a right to say it sucks without coming up with their own take.

If we don't have that right then we should all shut up and not say anything bad about anything, ever. Cause every one of us here doesn't like something and has given an alternative take on EVERYTHING they've critiqued.

Why is bad music bad? Cause it is. End of story. Should we all sit around trying to solve Nickelback's problems of why they suck?

But in terms of Mass Effect 3. After all this time I'll say this about it. It's not a BAD game (Metroid: Other M is a BAD game). It's a bad RPG, It has a bad ending, and it gave me no motivation to go back and replay the trilogy over again so I could play through an entirely alternate take of the three games because there was no point to doing that. So while it's not a bad game purely for the sake of being a bad game... it did diminish the impact and purpose of the games before it and that's why I don't like it. And no, I'm not writing fan fiction about how I think the game should have ended unless you're willing to pay me I'm already working on other stuff for free for this place

Regarding the Willy Wonka meme of "can you come up with somethin better?" ...people don't have to.

I agree. I do however think there's a difference between saying "I don't like the ending" and "the ending could have been better". I'm inclined to let the former stand (because it's someone voicing their opinion...which all of us have the right to do) whereas the latter is begging to be challenged with "how?".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lynk Former

But in terms of Mass Effect 3. After all this time I'll say this about it. It's not a BAD game (Metroid: Other M is a BAD game). It's a bad RPG, It has a bad ending, and it gave me no motivation to go back and replay the trilogy over again so I could play through an entirely alternate take of the three games because there was no point to doing that. So while it's not a bad game purely for the sake of being a bad game... it did diminish the impact and purpose of the games before it and that's why I don't like it.

Just because I want to understand: FPS only have to be fun, however RPGs have to have high replay value?

I agree. I do however think there's a difference between saying "I don't like the ending" and "the ending could have been better". I'm inclined to let the former stand (because it's someone voicing their opinion...which all of us have the right to do) whereas the latter is begging to be challenged with "how?".

Plenty of people say Nickelback's music could be better... (I don't think this cause nothing they do could ever make them any good, they suck plain and simple lol). But the great majority of the people saying that know nothing about music, can't sing and have never played an instrument. So how do they know they could be better? Because we know what music sounds good to us and what doesn't.

The question that comes to mind when people say that is "how would you make it better?" it's "how do you know it's not good?" and the answer usually is, "because I just know it is." since people people base it on a gut feeling the majority of the time.

Quote:

Just because I want to understand: FPS only have to be fun, however RPGs have to have high replay value?

What is "fun" to you and what is "fun" for others?

For me personally, it's more along the intentions of what the creators were trying to go for with the particular video game they're making. The biggest no-no for me is when developers end up betraying what their game is about and what they had set out to do with the game or game series and can't justify what they ended up with.

I'll take Metroid, the series and Metroid: Other M as an example. The Metroid series most famous element is the ability for the player to explore. Exploration is a huge part of finding where you need to go and what you need to do to progress through the game. Over the years, while there have been some changes to the later games in the series, they all still had that element of exploration in them that makes a Metroid game what it is while still adding new elements that were previously an unknown to the series like the Metroid Prime games did by adding a first person view and more emphasis on story, though this story was mostly optional. Metroid Prime successfully broke some of the rules while keeping the core aspects of what made the series great in its own games.

Metroid: Other M, the last Metroid game to be released broke all of the rules but at the same time created a game that was Metroid in name only. It had ZERO exploration, zero relevance and the gameplay and feel of the entire game was completely out character for the series. It's like if you put Assassin's Creed next to Super Mario Galaxy and said AC is the sequel to SMG.

So while Metroid: Other M would have gotten a pass if it was My Space Adventure: Other M and would have been considered just another mediocre new IP, it was a Metroid game which came with it certain conditions of holding that title that it couldn't meet. Therefore Metroid: Other M is entirely a BAD Metroid game.

In terms of Mass Effect 3, my expectations weren't based on the RPG genre it says it belongs to... or at least belonged to initially, it's what the developers of the first Mass Effect said they were going to do with the three games when they set out on this ambitious project. They wanted people to play through the trilogy and get to the end and then say "wow, okay, I've gotten this ending, I wonder what other kind of ending I can get if I go back to the start and play the trilogy differently?"

When you get to the end of ME3, that drive to get you to replay the series isn't there. And sure, a lot of people will say "it's the journey, not the end that matters" but in terms of video gaming, if you have a game with alternate endings, the best way to get them to replay your game is to have those endings unreachable unless you meet certain conditions in your journey to get to that point. And when you do get to that point, you shouldn't be standing in the exact same spot, doing the exact same thing with the exact same choices but with a different final cutscene, especially now with the Internet. It needs to be the kind of ending where you could be in Earth's orbit in the final moment, or you could still be in the Citadel's nebula with an army of geth and quarians working together to take over the Reaper's programming which in turn gets you a very different set of gameplay levels to reach those alternate endings since in the second one, you would never have set foot on Earth because you were leading a strike team straight to the Citadel itself. Also, ugh *shakes head* I hate coming up with these fan fiction-esc outcomes.

The point is, I don't expect RPGs to have replay value, I expect to play a role in a larger story... however, I expected Mass Effect as a series to make me want to go back and replay the trilogy to get different outcomes. It failed to do that for me. Just like I expect Metroid to get me to explore strange alien locales and encounter mysterious ruins and creatures. Other M didn't do any of that for me, it was a straight line from start to finish and was narrated by a hormonal teen girl (I'm not going to explain that, just trust me... it was).

In terms of Mass Effect 3, my expectations weren't based on the RPG genre it says it belongs to... or at least belonged to initially, it's what the developers of the first Mass Effect said they were going to do with the three games when they set out on this ambitious project. They wanted people to play through the trilogy and get to the end and then say "wow, okay, I've gotten this ending, I wonder what other kind of ending I can get if I go back to the start and play the trilogy differently?"

To me, the issue there is not that they said that at the release of ME1, it's that they were still saying that at the release of ME3. It would be one thing if the games had evolved over the series and Bioware was upfront and honest about it, but when the series' project director flat out knowingly lies about the impact of player choice on the final game in the series as it is being shipped out to customers, that's a whole other ballgame.

Did a bit of digging, and found that not only did Hudson and Walters handle the ending, but they wouldn't let the other writers do a little peer review. As a writer, I have to say that peer review is absolutely necessary to writing a story, especially one on as grand a scale as Mass Effect, in order for it to be good. In my creative writing class last semester, my writings that were peer reviewed got much higher grades than the ones that weren't. If Mass Effect 3's ending had been peer reviewed, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

The whole dev team, including the other writers, already knew what the ending was a year or more before the game was released. It wasn't a secret that Hudson and Walters concealed and sneaked onto the gold master just before the discs were pressed. I'm sure some of them piped in with their 2c, but that changed nothing. Chain of command and all that. And I'm sure some of them actually liked it, just as some fans do.

To me, the issue there is not that they said that at the release of ME1, it's that they were still saying that at the release of ME3. It would be one thing if the games had evolved over the series and Bioware was upfront and honest about it, but when the series' project director flat out knowingly lies about the impact of player choice on the final game in the series as it is being shipped out to customers, that's a whole other ballgame.

That's what's most disturbing about it to me. For a trilogy that claimed to drive home the point that the difficult choices you make throughout will really matter in the end, giving plays the option of three very similar choices was just wrong to me. For the entire trilogy, it was like Bioware gave you 1000 different paths to walk to tell your own story and make your own choices...but once you got to the end, all these roads converged into three narrow, eerily similar roads for you to make your choice and just hope you didn't choose the stupid outcome. But really, if you feel like you made a mistake, you could just load up your save game to 5 minutes earlier and pick another choice to see that ending - that's the definition of a flimsy ending right there.

This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.

Good thing we didn't get an ABC ending. Imagine how bad that would have been.

Obviously the full concept of the IT has not been conveyed to those who so easily dismiss it. Of course IT invalidates the other endings; it would have been the springboard to meaningful DLC that continued the story to a conclusion that had a chance of making sense.

Oh, by the way, that is how you improve the ending. Not really sure what the grand mystery for the deep thinkers is here.